Tabula Rasa
by fleurlicorne
Summary: A Vegeta and Bulma story loosely based off The Dark Tower by Stephen King and Norse mythology about the pervasive nature of obsession and the redemption that always trails closely behind.


_Disclaimer: I definitely don't own Dragon Ball or the Dark Tower_

 _Cover art by the wonderful lovelykotori whose art can be accessed on_ _lovelykotori . deviantart . com, or on tumblr and twitter under the same name._

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The body of the only woman he had ever loved had been reduced to cinders that now flowed evenly through his fingers. When he had returned, Vegeta had searched hopelessly for her ki, but he did not find it. Instead, the licks of wind that languidly breezed by, wafted her scent over to him, which was growing ever fainter. Her scent was usually the most arrestingly mouth-watering delicacy that he had ever tasted but now something was amiss. Something had spoiled in her scent that now smelled of the cancerous char that crusted over cooked meat. His bloodhound nose honed in on the source of the moldy scent, and it was disturbingly, right below where he had emerged through the door. But there was no Bulma, there was just her final resting place.

Now Vegeta was sifting through her ashes, in a vain endeavour to conjure her back into a whole being. Her ashes were cold to the touch despite the recent heat of the crematory upon her. In her ashes, something shone dimly yet still pierced his eyes. It was the ring worn by all Saiyan kings for centuries that denoted their status and clout. He had entrusted it to Bulma and she had sported it like a wedding band. He gripped the ring tensely, unable to differentiate her ashes from the obsidian.

His thoughts raced in a blur across his mind. What had transpired here? Bulma, why did you have to die? I should have died instead. I've had one foot in the grave since birth. He mumbled a small prayer clumsily in a language he barely remembered. He ceded his Super Saiyan form, unfit to boast so much light when she was lost to the dark.

Far off, a rooster crowed and Vegeta's head angrily reeled in the direction of the noise, ready to blast the sorry creature that would dare speak during his mate's memorial. But there was nothing that could make a sound, only that which would make you cry.

In a wooded alcove nearby, he sighted them, the three norns, the three fates, those three furies who had cast a devouring shadow over his life. The spinner, the measurer and the cutter of all the threads of life stood as if in a mute ovation. If he had known what a scourge they would become, he would not have accorded them such privileged access to his life. But an invitation once extended to them could never be rescinded. This was all because of them. Bulma had died unnecessarily, in part due to their meddling.

He ran over to them, a man possessed, but they swiftly turned their backs on him to inspect a finely woven tapestry that had a single blue thread torn out of place. The norns always pretended that he was not even a minute curiosity to them, but he must have been if they felt compelled to stalk him through life, one hardship after another. To garner their attention, Vegeta pitched their scissors into the bushes and overturned their spinning wheel. He was about to dispose of their tangle of life threads, when he stopped. He saw the end of the line, where all the threads originated, from which all the fates arose. The skein of time had fully been unwound.

The norns still did not react, acting as if they had all the time in the world when really there was so little time remaining. Vegeta needed answers. "Show me what happened to her," he howled miserably. He tried to seize one of the norns by her drab robes but caught only air. "Show me." In response, he heard a round object roll moistly through the grass. It was Merlin's glass! Vegeta hastily picked up the glass from the ground and stared longingly into its murky interior. "What happened to Bulma after I left?" he appealed to it. The clouds of smoke in the crystal ball began to clear.

 _Back in the throne room in the palace of Vegetasei, Vegeta marched regally through the double-tiered doors, hauling the decapitated head of the arthropod that had been plaguing his planet by its antenna to present to his father._

" _Ahh, Vegeta, back so soon?" King Vegeta inquired with surprise. "And what do you have for me today, my son? You beheaded Cell?" the King paused in proud admiration. "That ki-sucker leached the life out of a number of our elite soldiers when all I needed to do was to send out one warrior, my son to defeat him. Did you sustain any serious injuries?"_

" _Not at all," Vegeta said pompously, kicking the head to his father's feet. "He just made some cuts to my hands. I think after this though I will add gloves to my combat attire."_

" _That is most pleasing to me, despite never liking to hear the spilling of royal blood. We shall have a great banquet and battle royale in the slave pits in your honour for this achievement."_

 _Suddenly, Nappa came barreling through the doors in excitement. King Vegeta glared disapprovingly at him. "What is the meaning of this Nappa? I was having a private interlude with my son, we were not to be interrupted."_

" _Pardon the intrusion, my Lord, but I didn't think you'd want to wait to hear my announcement."_

" _What announcement?"_

" _The forces on planet Mystic have all been decimated and the remaining populace has pledged fealty to you. Our scientists are already learning their ingenious techniques as we speak."_

" _Isn't that the planet we have been trying to purge unsuccessfully for over three years so far? They have finally capitulated?"_

" _The very same, my Lord."_

 _King Vegeta rose from his throne. "This is quite a momentous occasion, good news all around."_

" _It gets even better, my Lord." Nappa delivered the corpses of a black and a white swan with contorted necks to the King's feet to join with Cell's head._

 _Both Vegetas regarded the tribute disdainfully. "This is not something you present to royalty, Nappa. If you were going to bring us dinner, I'd have preferred it seasoned and cooked first," scolded the King. "Send this to the kitchens."_

" _No, my Lord, you misunderstand me. Those swans aren't a meal they were guardians. As you know, planet Mystic housed many mysterious entities, some that even had psychic abilities. That planet must have been one the gods once favoured for although they have since departed, they left behind the norns of legend."_

" _The norns?" King Vegeta articulated carefully._

" _Yes, the three witches who assign the threads of fate. The ones who see all of time, past, present and future all at once. We killed their guardians, those swans there. It was a fiercer fight than you would think. We captured the three seers and brought them here. I demanded that they tell me my fortune, but alas I could not see through their eyes. I would have killed them but they made a rather tantalizing proposition. They offered to read the fortune of the young prince in exchange for us sparing their immortal lives."_

" _Me?" Vegeta said derisively. "As if they could see into my future."_

" _They specifically requested you," Nappa confirmed._

" _It's nice to know that I am renowned in a galaxy so far away. It would be most droll to have a magic trick performed. We have been lacking in such whimsy after I murdered the court jester. Very well, let these crones foretell what auspices lay in my future. Let's see if they are wise about what knowledge they impart."_

 _The King furrowed his brow. "Are you sure about this, my son? The future is not always kind, some things are best left unknown until the proper time of their unveiling."_

" _Tch, that kind of talk is for the faint of heart. I do not fear the future. It's all just a hoax anyways, I doubt these crones can tell me anything noteworthy."_

" _Now my Prince", Nappa explained, "the norns's eyes see all that will ever be, and to see what their eyes see, you must gaze into their crystal ball. Only a worthy few have been able to unriddle anything."_

" _Who is more worthy than I?" Vegeta said with a sinister precociousness, as he plucked a feather from the chest of the black swan and tucked it into a fold of his armour. "I want to know when I will rule the universe."_

 _Nappa bowed to him, leveling with the widened gap between the dead insect's eyes as he bent down. "Let them in," Nappa clamoured to the guards outside and the doors creaked open with a plaintive groan._

 _Three cloaked zephyrs glided spectrally into the room. They did not walk nor did they float rather they seemed to drift into this reality from another plane of existence. The air and warmth was expelled from the room and everything turned cold and foreboding. Even the prince felt a chill shiver up his spine. The three norns circled around him, and the one in the middle brandished a crystal ball for him to take. The middle norn had a hand stripped of flesh, and motioned to him with a spidery finger._

 _Vegeta tried, but he could not see what lay under their long coverings, whether they were corporeal or just vapours. Vegeta rudely snatched the ball from the grasp of the gnarled finger and looked into the mist. "What am I supposed to be looking at?" he barked impatiently. Then he saw a vision of an apocalyptic future._

 _The twelve universes that were bolstered by beams nailed into the back of the Great Dragon God were undergoing the big crunch and were all collapsing back into one another into a singularity. Everything that existed from pulsating quasars to flavours of quarks was being crushed into the void from whence it came. And the stimulus behind all this destruction was a solitary man, a man in black, who oddly had the brightest golden hair. Before the mass extinction could be completed, the beams of the multiverse were upheld by two gloved hands. The man in black snarled and spat but he was powerless to counteract the actions of this new man. This champion was dressed in Saiyan armour, his back was to Vegeta, so the Prince could not discern his face, but he could tell he also had the same golden mane. The hero Saiyan fused the beams of the multiverse back together and everything was restored. Finally, the man turned around, and Vegeta recognized his face as his own, only that of his adult self, who sneered at his chibi version under the sear of his teal eyes. The norns had shown him a promise of what was to come. He would become the most famed fighter of them all and he would not only rule the multiverse but save it too._

 _The vision faded, but Vegeta said nothing, he was too dazed. He dropped the ball aimlessly back into the hand of the middle norn, but not before the blood from his own fingers, that were fresh from battle, dribbled onto the exterior glass. The norns all glanced upwards, slow and calculating, the gift of blood he had unwittingly bestowed now gave them an unrestricted window to his life and the ability to follow him forever more. And then Vegeta slumped to the floor unconscious._

" _What have you done to my son?" King Vegeta bellowed. "Kill those crones," he ordered._

 _Nappa rounded on the norns, but they had already vanished. They all attempted to revive Prince Vegeta. His eyes flicked open, a shade of green was interspersed with the black._

" _What did those old hags show you?" the King demanded._

 _Vegeta sat upright, brushing away their smelling salts and concern. All he said before passing out once more was, "The legendary Super Saiyan, it is not a myth."_

The present Vegeta looked up from the green absinthe glow of the glass in a rage. He did not wish to look upon layers within layers of visions like a rotting onion bulb into his past. That had been the start of it all. The norns were after that an outlying presence in his life, immune to his attacks, but willing every now and again to give him some insight into his future. He learned that they were the daughters of Merlin and that the glass had been created with his wizardry when time was still young. Vegeta would watch the norns who were unreachable to him but still so close as to feel claustrophobic, as they cut at rich silvery ribbons that each represented a life and whose spool became thinner and greyer as time progressed. They could make it so no one else could see them but him and drive him insane with their visions.

Soon after that, he had his first visit from the man in black. He had been heading for his mother's chambers. For some reason he had craved her touch, that was more consoling than was appropriate for a Saiyan, especially for the royal consort to have. Vegeta rarely interacted with his mother, for Saiyan childcare was mandated by a strict reservation. Furthermore, his mother seemed so very weakly genteel to him, and he did not want to be tainted by such weakness. It was said that his mother was once a great warrior whose might was enough to conquer a King, but Vegeta saw no suggestion of such an esteemed past from her.

There were strange deep suckling noises coming from her room. "Mother, are you there?" Vegeta asked. Receiving no reply, Vegeta decided to just enter the bedchamber. Inside the room, his mother was sprawled comatose across the arms of a man. Her gown was bedraggled with her shoulders and the top of her breasts exposed. The man was hunched over his mother, so Vegeta could not identify any distinguishing traits, except that the man's garments were those of a Kaioshin's. "What are you doing to my mother?" Vegeta demanded. The man did not respond and the suckling noises continued. "I am Prince Vegeta and I asked you a question." Vegeta looked closer and shrank back appalled. The man was latched onto his mother's neck and was drinking her blood. Her blood dripped in rivulets, staining the royal crest on her clothes. The man had punctured the mark of bondage that his father had incised onto her neck. This usurper was ignoring his father's claim and claiming her for himself. Vegeta then noticed that his mother had turned blue and pallid. She was already dead.

The man, done with his meal, tossed his mother aside, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Such an easy one to seduce, all I had to do was act _kind_."

This was treason that had to be quashed. Vegeta flung a disc of ki at the intruder's body. The man caught the death blow in his hand, and fondly caressed the ki that mutated into a black rose which he handed back to Vegeta. Vegeta felt an unfathomable power from the man, and this time instead of going in for the kill, he reached for his hood that had masked his features. The man was the same man in black from his vision whose golden hair was like a jungle of vines ready to ensnare him. Vegeta forgot about his mother, he focused only on the Super Saiyan with the tell-tale face of a commoner. How had he become so powerful? He was the prince, it was his destiny to become. He would not let this usurper claim his destiny like he had claimed his mother. "How?" he commanded.

The man in black turned on his heel, and looked impishly over his shoulder. "Chase me little prince, and you shall find out."

So for years afterwards, Vegeta had chased him, to make him reveal his secret, to tell him how he had done it, how he had become a Super Saiyan. But that was all in the past. He didn't care about that anymore. He wanted to know what had happened to Bulma.

"Damned glass," Vegeta cursed, "I did not ask to see my history, I have already lived it. I asked to see hers, now show me." The haze in the glass did not transpose into a new retelling, if anything the fog became more opaque. It was not immediately conspicuous, but it was already recounting a parable from the past. A pang of sheer helplessness overcame Vegeta, he knew what this impenetrable darkness augured. "No, not this again," he moaned, "not Trunks, anything but this."

 _Vegeta was plunged right back into the thick of the demon realm. The man in black had lured him there in order to obtain the code to his conversion. His mate and three year old son had accompanied him without complaint during the perilous trek there. He had resented their addition, they would just serve to slow and bring him down like two unresponsive gangrenous limbs that should have been amputated. But Bulma, in her staunch stubbornness had precluded the very idea of them being left behind. Their overbearing load plowed into him again like jagged spurs as a cavalcade of rancorous spirits and demons tailed them, with a clan of frost demons and Dabura, the king of the demons at the head. Only evil beings were allowed in the demon realm, so Bulma and Trunks, just by virtue of being there were violating an ancient treaty between their world and this netherworld. Vegeta, alone though, would have been more than welcome to stay. Demons feed on pure mortal souls, and having Bulma and Trunks's souls, right in their backyard brought even the most reclusive of demons out in the hopes that they would get a taste._

 _So they ran for their lives. Vegeta would have liked to stay and fight, but he was with his dependents. There was no honour in fleeing a fight but there was less honour in letting those to whom you are bound die. He carried Bulma in his arms as Trunks maintained the pace alongside him. Vegeta was impressed. He had wrongly concluded that his son would require his assistance in their flight, but somehow Trunks had learned to fly with the eagles on his own. He shouldn't have expected anything less, half-breed or not, Trunks still had inherited his illustrious blood._

 _But then the unthinkable occurred. Trunks tripped over something with an uncharacteristic lack of coordination, and he plummeted over the ridge next to the narrow path. Vegeta set Bulma down onto the ground, while he rushed to the edge of the precipice that Trunks had tumbled over. To his relief, Trunks had not fallen to a fate worse than death. By the tips of three of his fingers, Trunks held onto the crumbling border. It should have been an easy feat for Trunks to vault himself back upwards, but as Vegeta peered further downward, his relief had been short-lived. Starving sprites were pulling at Trunks's legs and lower body in corrosive wisps to bring him down into their bottom dwellings. Another one of Trunks's fingers detached from the ledge._

" _Papa," he cried, unable in his childish terror to draw from his vast stores of strength._

" _Save him Vegeta," Bulma shrieked hysterically._

 _Vegeta clamped down onto Trunks teetering hand, "I've got you boy." As he tried to pull Trunks to safety, Vegeta heard a barely suppressed snigger, and from the corner of his eyes, he saw something long and black, as slippery as a black mamba, withdraw from view, right where Trunks had tripped. Vegeta turned slightly, and was met with the teasing face of the man in black, who was twirling a long black staff in his hands. Vegeta understood. The man in black had attempted a subterfuge, and had angled his staff in front of Trunks to intentionally make him fall so that Vegeta would become more depraved and would fall deeper into lunacy. How dare this degenerate interfere with his family?! Vegeta would let the demons skin him alive. The demons inched closer and clawed eagerly at Trunks's body._

" _Save your son or catch me, you can't have both," the man in black proclaimed gleefully._

 _All it took was that one thousandth of a second of indecision to seal Trunks's fate. In his distraction, the demons had gained the upper hand. They yanked once more and Vegeta's hand around Trunks's slipped, and his son fell to the mercy of the ravenous demons below. In the background, he heard Bulma emit an earth-shattering wail while the man in black's mouth carved into a huge jack-o'lantern grin before he sneaked away in a puff of smoke. Vegeta's dry scream of horror never left his throat, too strangled by the sound of him choking on his own mangled soul. The boy, he had let him fall. The boy who was his rightful son and heir, who he had regarded as an obstacle to his fate, so he had let him fall. But that wasn't all Trunks was - he was strong, he loved Vegeta unconditionally, and now Vegeta knew like with the sudden strike of a blade, that he was proud of him and was fond of him too. Trunks had been so innocent that he could not see his father's faults even when their filth had dirtied everything around them. Their relationship was Vegeta's only one that had never consisted of hatred and reprisals. Yet he had let him fall. How many times had he let him fall? He had abandoned Trunks to his tragic destiny and had disregarded the bonds of kinship. Vegeta now sank into a listless nihilism. It was too dark to see what had become of his son, but he could hear it all. The sickening slurps of those demons feasting on his son's soul would haunt him forever. He could hear it just as loudly now even after all that time. He imagined the norns snipping away at another stunted thread, another life cut too soon. But secreted away in some freakish hovel within himself where no light could reach, was the unvarnished truth, that if it would have brought him closer to the man in black, Vegeta would have let Trunks fall again._

However, that was then. Now knowing what he did, he would not, he just had shame and regret. Vegeta had been transported back and unbeknownst to him, he had fallen to his knees and was pounding his fists aggrievedly into the earth. Despite the pain it inflicted on him, Vegeta had watched the rerunning of events in its entirety, looking one last time into the face of his son as he fell, as Trunks realized with only an uncomprehending sadness that his father wouldn't save him, couldn't, when he was too far gone with his obsession. Not diverting his gaze, not being distracted this time, was the least Vegeta could do. He could pay that final respect. "You vile norns," he cried, "I did not ask to suffer the pain of an old wound, I asked for fresh ones. Seeing Bulma's death will open new wounds within me, fatal ones. I know you sadistic norns would revel at that sight. So give it to me. Give me Bulma's death!"

The glass quivered, turning almost smaller and swollen like the hard marble of a clitoral hood. Clouds of visions swirled prettily in a pink floss. Another scene opened up shyly like a chrysanthemum at its first spring unfurling.

 _It was night and Bulma was wandering further into the gloom, but was not swallowed up by darkness, as she held the dragon ball to her chest that shone like a sphere of pure-hearted ki. A thin transparent sheet was wrapped chastely and as light as a moonbeam around her body. Such a meagre covering though could not conceal the star quality of her beauty and voluptuousness from those critters that go bump in the night. In a soft tone, matching the subtle fairy light from her magic ball, she called out, "Vegeta, is that you?"_

 _Vegeta revealed himself to her, entranced by her starlight, as his eyes struggled to readjust from his night vision. He had just returned from a long voyage. He hoped that she had not passed several sleepless nights waiting for him._

" _Vegeta!" Bulma dropped her sheet, leaping naked into his arms. "Vegeta, I love you." She showered sweet yearning kisses all over his lips, face, wherever her deprived lips could affix to him. "You left your dragon ball behind," Bulma said hurt._

 _Vegeta took the dragon ball back from her. He needed its light much more than she did. "I came back for it, you were just keeping it safe for me." Vegeta's heart had been eclipsed to her, to more tender feelings for a while now, ever since their son had perished, but now she was peeking through his dark curtain with the intensity of a solar flare. He gathered her roughly to him, their mouths coalescing into a stellar nucleosynthesis where their combined explosiveness never failed to create elements that were more complex and extraordinary than anything they had ever thought possible._

 _Soon they were on the bed, with Vegeta thrusting deeply into her hot plasma core. Bulma's hair feathered over the bed as she cooed bird-like with delight while Vegeta growled like an animal caught in a trap. She pecked at his bristling chest, biting away at his shell. "Don't ever leave me again," she moaned._

 _Her clutch on his cock right then became almost painful in its tight pleasure. Her glamour, her pressure, they cracked his hard shell, and not for the first time, a newborn feeling of happiness, that he had tried to bury in darkness after the death of his son, hatched inside of him. With his shell in pieces, he enfolded her in his arms, and their bodies soared in flight above the bed. He finally answered her, "Never, I'll never leave you again, never." He flew them to the land of eternal summer, their long winter left behind and Bulma cried out with a phoenix song that struck Vegeta with its bittersweet melody. Her clutch was just too tight now, it was only painful, but Vegeta had needed to feel the extent of her pain. His essence speckled spots inside her, with one starburst shooting deep into her womb and fertilizing one of her unprotected eggs._

 _Neither had known at the time, they both found out later, that they had conceived that night. Out of their love, they had bred another child, to help soothe the wound that Trunks's demise had caused. They were going to have another baby, yet Vegeta had left her. The following morning he had left her._

 _As the sun rose, Vegeta awoke from a foreign and aggravating touch. The man in black had somehow nestled in between his and Bulma's bodies, a cuckoo in their love nest. He looked owlishly at Vegeta. "Ahh, the Saiyan prince awakens. Pardon me, I did not mean to come between lovers. I pride myself on usually conducting myself with a bit more politesse."_

 _Vegeta took a moment to register what was happening. He had been content, for too short a time, and it was being cruelly snatched away again. "Get the fuck out of here," he snarled._

" _Soon, I just wanted you to have a night to remember with your mate before I stole you away again." The man in black turned from Vegeta to his other side. "So this is Bulma. What a lovely little dove she is Vegeta. No wonder she could change you," he drawled. "It would take someone this exquisite to change the prince of all Saiyans." The man in black fondled her breast appreciatively._

" _Get your hands off her," Vegeta growled._

 _The man in black twisted her nipple painfully and Bulma grimaced slightly in her sleep. "She's too gentle for your rough hand, you will break her." The man in black turned from Bulma and back to Vegeta, stroking him demeaningly up his throat. "You're making me jealous Vegeta, I thought you were chasing after me, not some insignificant human woman. Or am I wrong and your pursuit of me isn't over? You still want to chase me, don't you? Oh yes, I can see it in your eyes. You don't want to be weak like this, you want to know my strength." The man in black pouted, "I was the first one you chased after all. This will be the last chase Saiyan, and then it's over, I promise. Just one more chase, one more flight of fancy, and then you're a free bird, a Super Saiyan, if you still want it, that is. Your earthling mate is only pigeonholing you as a weak mortal man. What a pity, it's weakness like this that killed your mother."_

" _You are what killed my mother," Vegeta yelled, shoving the man in black from the bed. "When I kill you, an eternity will not be long enough for you to feel the pain from my wounds."_

" _So vicious, you can be such a stereotypical Saiyan." The man in black stood upright from the floor, and towered over Vegeta. "But you'll have to catch me first."_

" _I won't leave her," Vegeta pronounced unconvincingly._

" _Then you'll never catch up to me." The man in black made an interdimensional door in the air and walked through it._

 _It was the door Vegeta had been searching for, now representing not an opportunity for greatness but a cowardly exit. Vegeta fought then with his regurgitated feelings of love that should have never resurfaced. He was so close to his childhood dream, he could feel it. When it was over, the monkey would be off his back, and he could love Bulma with the peace of mind of a whole man. They could finally be happy. But until this was complete, they would never have that, Vegeta would forever be a man chained to this chase. Bulma had forgiven him for the death of their son, for the loss of his soul, so Vegeta clung to the hope that she would also find it in her heart to forgive him for this too. Vegeta kissed Bulma lightly on her lips and whispered into her ear, "Bulma, I'll be back soon. Jaco will keep you safe." And without a backwards glance, Vegeta followed the man in black through the door._

It was so intimately real, almost as if she had been right beneath him again, that he had almost soiled his pants. Sensual memories fogged his mind whereas the glass became easier to read. Another thread rigged to his unsteady grip on reality severed.

Vegeta remembered the first time he had seen Bulma through the glass. His first impression had been that she wouldn't be long for this world, especially the cutthroat world that he would integrate her into. He was still a prince, but it was an empty title now. His planet had been destroyed by a more powerful imperial force. As was the way of the world, Vegeta had become an indentured servant to his new ruler, a merciless lizard despot by the name of Freeza. He performed as a puppet for all the lizard's purposes. Vegeta loathed it, but all things considered, if he were to be a slave, at least he was still provided with his favourite pastime and outlet of violence. Freeza had learned of Vegeta's visits from the norns, and sometimes used their unwelcome presence in Vegeta's life to his advantage. Although Freeza could not see the norn's himself, he made the prince question them about any threats on the horizon to his empire that he would duly eliminate and also he asked them to identify individuals with the potential to help him increase his stranglehold on the galactic throne. Twenty years had been penciled in using that template, and as the years went by, Vegeta found himself the last of his race, besides the man in black.

The norns had selected another special individual, a talented scientist with bizarre inventions whose technological prowess could bring the empire from a relative stone age and into the future. Vegeta was heading a crew tasked with procuring the scientist, a woman by the name of Bulma who lived on the planet Earth. His crew had secured the woman easily enough even with all her fancy technological tricks. For all her brains she had no brawn.

They were about to depart from Earth, when Vegeta noticed that her prison cell had been jimmied open with a hairpin, and she was no longer aboard the ship. She had somehow exercised her intelligence to resist imprisonment, making fools of them all. Vegeta castigated his crew, killing one of them, for not properly guarding her cell and for not taking their assignment seriously, even though Bulma had no ki to speak of and containing her should not have been a difficult matter. He had to go bring her back himself. Freeza's dunderheads had proven themselves incapable of the task. While canvassing her cell, Vegeta had memorized her scent, so there would be nowhere on this world where she could hide from him.

He had tracked her down to a primeval forest, where trees that were thousands of years old stood tall. As soon as Vegeta stepped within the trees, he was assaulted by her weapons that were stashed in clever places throughout the forest. There were landmines, trip wires and lasers that he circumvented with mild entertainment. The pièce de résistance was a murder of crows that she had somehow programmed into attacking him in a furious black tornado. One of the crows had managed to nick his finger and he had nabbed it mid-flight so that he could wring its neck when he established that it was just a robot she had designed.

He finally discovered her, armed with a grenade launcher, with army fatigues and war paint on. She had tried to disguise herself, but Vegeta still recognized her as the girl from the glass. But what the glass had not adequately portrayed was how stunningly gorgeous the female in front of him was. She was as wild and exotic as any Saiyan woman, and even had the same murderous gleam in her eyes as they would. Bulma took her best shot to nuke him to smithereens, but Vegeta just grabbed the barrel of the weapon and reshaped the metal into a hard pretzel. He restrained her as she frantically fought against him, her body fluttering against his like a bird in a net.

"You will be punished," Vegeta told her.

Bulma inexplicably moved closer to him, and looked him hatefully in the eyes as her expletive-laden lips hovered over his scowling ones. And then Bulma gave him the kiss of a knife. Vegeta had seen it coming, but it was not his aim to avoid it. He removed the knife smooth as butter from above his heart, threw it to the ground, and examined the wound. Vegeta smiled indulgently at her. "Little bird, that's only a gentle peck. And if you're aiming for my heart, you won't find it since I have none."

Bulma screeched once in outraged defeat, then her body sagged a bit, and she shivered, finally reacting to the cold night air. Vegeta unpinned his black cloak and draped it over her shoulders. The unexpected kindness silenced her and she closed her eyes in bitter frustration. Vegeta swaddled her in his cloak and transferred her back to the ship. The rhythmic rocking of his arms slowly lulled her to sleep, just like it would have done the same to any other bird whose sunny world had been replaced with darkness. He never did get around to punishing her, and when they arrived in the capital city of Freeza's empire, they went their separate ways.

Their paths crossed again when he was trying to evade the norns. He had been treading anxiously down the halls of the science wing, when he had spotted one of Freeza's low ranking mooks hitting her and trying to undress her. He had blasted the mook away, and was about to cruise past her, when Bulma detained him. Clinching his arm, she dissected him thoroughly and the contempt in her eyes for her captor subsided to confusion and gratitude. With a quiet dignity, she had said thanks before releasing his arm.

From that day forth they were almost like friends. Bulma would seek him out, she always knew where to find him. From her mouth came forth a continuous stream of questions, asking him how his day was, his opinions, his interests. Offended at her brashness and how she so unaffectedly addressed a superior such as him, he had ignored her. But Bulma persisted until he would answer and the conversation flowed naturally between them. He learned that she did actually like to fight, just not with fists but with a biting tongue. And there was no denying the sharp thrill that spread over him during one of their tiffs. Their animosity redirected from each other and towards the demagogue that had robbed them of their lives and homes. They conspired to overthrow Freeza. Vegeta told her about the norns and the man in black. And in exchange, Bulma made him training equipment and even a gravity room. As he grew stronger, lust sprouted within them. One day they had another one of their acrimonious exchanges, and Vegeta was alternating between thoughts of killing her and thoughts of taking her to bed. His lust had won, and he entered her roughly from the back, not breaking until he outlasted her, where her body buckled under his in worn out satisfaction. She had put up a half-hearted fight against him initially, but Vegeta knew that it was false. When he took her, her body had eased onto his and he caught her sly look of victory, like she had been waiting for him to do this for a long time.

After that day, they belonged to each other. And so that heart he pledged did not exist began to thaw from its ice prison. She was changing him. Bulma had something he had never experienced - compassion that impelled her to rescue the few survivors from her planet and to care about the welfare of the other slaves in Freeza's dominion. Her goodness was something to aspire to. Vegeta would never be good, but she made him want to try. She was saving his soul, and by extension, the multiverse. His strength continued to grow, and soon enough even Freeza was killed by his hand, relegated to just another footnote in history. But still Vegeta was not a Super Saiyan.

As they sailed through the cosmic sea in Freeza's ship, they lay in Freeza's plush bed. Vegeta fingered the necklace around Bulma's neck. The necklace had an orange bauble for decoration. "You always wear this," Vegeta murmured, "and it always glows. What is it?"

"It's a dragon ball, said to be an egg from the Great Dragon God himself. They come in a set of seven. I have the four star one, and as long as the Great Dragon that holds up all twelve universes lives, the dragon ball will continue to glow. Once the dragon balls were capable of granting wishes, but the Great Dragon God has lost that ability, so now it just brings light. As a result, I'll always be able to see in the dark."

"Where did you acquire such a rare item?"

"I don't remember, and neither of my parents remembered where it came from either. I've always just had it." Bulma shrugged her shoulders. But now I have a question for you. She reached for his hand, indicating to the elegant stonework on his finger. "What's this ring you always wear?"

"It's the royal ring of Vegetasei, fashioned from obsidian and the tail bone of the proposed first legendary Super Saiyan. It was passed down to my father from his father and he gave it to my mother as a wedding gift. When she died, I was bequeathed it." In a fit of caprice, he removed it from his finger and offered it to Bulma. "I'd like you to have it, if you would take it."

"Vegeta," Bulma exhaled falteringly, "it's so unique, are you sure?"

He nodded, "It belongs on the finger of the queen of Vegetasei." He slid it on her ring finger and it fit perfectly.

"Vegeta, is this like a wedding ring?" Bulma inquired as tears of elation rimmed her eyes. She dabbed at her eyes, back to her brassy self. "I guess I am your queen so it's about time you made it official," she joked. She kissed him lovingly. "You gave me the last treasure from your planet, but I have nothing of equal value to offer you, except why don't you take my necklace? That way we're both exchanging our last mementos from our home worlds?"

He grabbed her necklace and felt its mellow heat. "I will wear this into battle," Vegeta stated gravely.

Bulma admired the ring and observed that it was inlaid with runic hieroglyphs. "There's an inscription in this ring," she remarked to Vegeta.

"I know."

"Well, what's it say?"

"Who knows? The language has been forgotten in these modern times."

It took just a week for Bulma to develop a cipher for the characters. "The first part of the ring says, my life's blood is not my power," she declared. "Too bad I can't decipher the rest of the runes. They've been scratched out with time. I would have liked to know the entire message."

Vegeta couldn't believe that any Saiyan would ever espouse such a weak motto. Bulma must have mistranslated.

So for a fleeting interval, they submitted to the efflorescence of their bliss. But it did not last. The man in black had not harassed him in almost three years, but Vegeta knew he was still lurking somewhere out there. And at the most jubilant occasion in his life, after the birth of his son, the man in black returned and hounded him relentlessly. Vegeta had almost foolishly believed that her love would suffice, that he could forgo his goal and the man in black, and that they would be the benevolent rulers of the universe in Freeza's stead. But he couldn't, it just wasn't enough, she just wasn't enough. With renewed vigor, Vegeta rededicated himself to his ascension, and the three of them, together as a motley band, had chased after the man in black.

No longer aroused by nostalgia, Vegeta was roused into action by anger. He turned accusingly towards the norns and hardened his hold on the glass. "You are all just playing with me. You are not going to show me what I seek, so I'll destroy you like you've destroyed me." Vegeta spitefully launched the glass to the ground, and that ball, under whose thrall he had stared at hungrily for years, finally cracked. The mystique was gone, and it was just normal broken glass that couldn't even threaten him with any more years of bad luck.

However, something insidious that had been trapped within the glass since the time of Merlin, had been released. Demon exhaust that convened into the figure of an elder Kai emanated from the shards and enveloped itself around him. Vegeta gagged on the ghastly fumes that were an alchemy of converting malice into suffering. Merlin's breath had infiltrated his lungs where each horrid molecule was a pickaxe to his alveoli that inflated and deflated him with waste. As he clawed at his throat, trying to expel the evil breath from his trachea, he was attacked by another vision.

 _His hands were clenched around the neck of the man in black as he shook him maniacally._

 _In a gargled chuckle, the man in black wheezed, "Choke me, send me to my grave and all my secrets too."_

 _Vegeta hurled him forcefully to the ground. His death would be soon but not a moment before he obtained the antidote to his obsession._

 _The man in black rubbed his neck gaily. "So you've caught me. Well done," he clapped in mock applause. "You have reached your potential. You have the strength to rival or dare I say, surpass the gods."_

" _But I am not yet a Super Saiyan," Vegeta argued. "I cannot save the multiverse until I transform. Tell me how it's done."_

" _So rude, just cutting to the chase like that. Since when are you worried about the fate of the multiverse? I thought this was only about becoming stronger?"_

 _Since I met her, Vegeta thought. I owe her a carefree life with the multiverse, with her Earth intact._

" _Your reasons are strange, but your own." The man in black sat cross-legged on a fetid stump as he invoked a fire with dancing pink flames. "Come, let us palaver first."_

 _Vegeta stomped his boot into the fire to quench the flames. "Tell me how you did it, Black," so I can fix everything, so I can achieve at least one thing in this life._

" _Now, now, there's plenty of time for that." The man in black rekindled the fire. "Sit," Black said, with a demanding edge to the impeccable politeness in his voice._

 _Vegeta sat down hesitantly around the fire, resigned that the answers to his questions would be drawn out._

" _It's been so many years Vegeta. The man in black is a bit formal, my name when I still had a name was Goku, so call me Goku Black."_

 _Goku? That was not a Saiyan name, he frowned. Vegeta frowned again as he took in their surroundings. "What is this place?"_

 _Goku Black raised an eyebrow. "Vegeta, surely you must recognize this place?"_

 _The terra-cotta sand, the red suns, he did indeed recall it. "This is Vegetasei. But that's not possible, the planet was annihilated by Freeza."_

" _So many things are not what they seem," Black hinted vaguely._

 _Thus, it had come down to this, everything was full circle. The man in black had fled across the universe and Vegeta had followed his labyrinthine trail when the resolution had always been in an empty desert wasteland back on Vegetasei. Vegeta scrutinized Goku Black's face, which he saw in higher definition thanks to the light of the fire. His face had a sunken mummified look to it and his golden hair was proven to be counterfeit from his roots, which were the rosy colour of watery blood. "You are not a Saiyan," a fact not a statement._

" _This is just one of my many forms," Goku Black said blithely. He materialized two tea cups and a boiling kettle whistled over the fire. "Would you care to join me in a tea party?" He handed Vegeta one of the tea cups, which he reluctantly accepted. Goku Black picked up the kettle. "I will pour."_

 _The tea had the appearance of crimson blood with sakura blossoms sprinkled over it. Vegeta had no intention of drinking the steaming liquid in his cup._

" _Dear prince, do you detect treachery? I am most chagrined." Goku Black chortled, "I'm not going to kill you."_

 _Vegeta took a testing sample of the tea, and to his consternation, it was delicious. Its honeyed taste was enticingly reminiscent of something that he just wanted to drink to the very last drop. "If you aren't a Saiyan then who are you?"_

" _Something older than this multiverse. I'm attracted to things that need destroying." With a dangerous charisma, he smirked, "I've been told that I appeal to the worst attributes in a man. That devil on your shoulder that you futilely try to turn angelic? I whisper sweet nothings to that devil, to your true desires that you cannot outwardly admit." A dark hilarity passed over his features, enamoured with all the havoc he could wreak. In a shocking twist, he confided, "You aren't the only Saiyan to have been attracted to me. So many throughout the centuries have called on me to award the status of a Super Saiyan. None of them succeeded, they all succumbed to madness first. But I think you Vegeta are different. You seem to have the levelheadedness required. You shall be the first since that first legendary Super Saiyan long ago to join the ranks. By the way, the first Super Saiyan, his ascension had nothing to do with me, he had his own inspiration."_

" _But I never called to you, so why torment me?"_

" _Didn't you, Vegeta?" Black disagreed. "That first reading from the norns, it showed you your heart's desire, glory and power as a Super Saiyan. You desperately wanted to attain it, but you had no inkling about how to proceed, barely even being able to control your own oozaru transformation. You called for me subconsciously, and so here I am. You could have banished me at any time, if you had truly desired it. But we both know you didn't. Regardless of what you may believe, I am not here to antagonize you. We all have our place in the eyes of the Great Dragon God, even me. From your summoning, I was sent to you as an emissary from a higher ruler. Believe it or not, older and crueler gods exist and their power is something to behold. You would weep at how far beneath them you are." Goku Black shook his head to himself. "The hands of the puppet master are filled with mischief. My own abilities, I haven't always had them, I was weak once too, a victim just like you Vegeta. But over time I just_ _ **became**_ _. I am now a god, but the time of the gods is passing. Even those most ancient untouchable entities know their end is nigh."_

 _Vegeta took another sip of his tea, incapable of processing that he was just a pawn in an unending game of chess for some higher being's diversion. "What is this drink?" he asked, in the interest of changing the subject so he could recollect his muddled thoughts._

" _I'm glad you asked. It's their blood," Black giggled._

" _Their blood? Bulma and Trunks's blood?" He pushed the tea cup away, aghast. It chipped and the crimson blood was greedily absorbed by the desert sand._

" _Not quite," Black corrected, "Trunks is dead, you know that. It's Bulma's and your unborn child's blood."_

" _What child?" Vegeta shouted._

" _That morning when you followed me here, the night before you got her pregnant. Didn't you know?" he disclosed with feigned concern._

 _Vegeta got to his feet. "I've got to get back to her, I've got to support her through this," he rambled. "You have just squandered my time. I have learned nothing from you and I suspect you have no answers for me and that you never did."_

" _You've left her alone for two months already."_

" _Two months?"_

" _Didn't I mention that time passes differently in this realm? Silly me," Black apologized knavishly, "forgetting to tell you something important like that. And for the past week, she hasn't even been home."_

 _Vegeta felt himself lapse into a nervous dread. "What do you mean? That house is enchanted, no enemies can enter and hurt her...unless she leaves herself. But why would she leave?"_

 _Black clucked, "You know how stubborn she is. Morning sickness with a Saiyan child is never an easy undertaking. She wanted to alleviate the pain. Her capsule lab didn't have all the ingredients to make a morning sickness remedy, so she went to forage for medicinal herbs in the forest. She didn't think it would take long and that no one would find out. But that alien friend of hers, Jaco, he didn't have any more confidence in you two. He was tired of being holed away in that hut, he wanted to live again, so he made a pact with the villagers, Bulma for immunity and his freedom. When she left the safety of your home, Jaco notified the luddites of her location and delivered her to them."_

" _What will they do to her?"_

 _Black drank some of his own tea, and licked his lips with a grin. "I hear they want to burn her."_

 _Vegeta rushed to the interdimensional door to immediately return to her, but his tea had been poisoned after all. Vegeta crashed down right beside the door hinges as a gruesome phantasmagoria impregnated him everywhere. His head thudded frenziedly like a rat in a cage and he was being torn apart, limb by limb. His pupils contracted to pinpoints then dilated cartoonishly, as a psychedelic kaleidoscope spiralled around him that lurched to a stop when it had settled on its most spiritual trip. His throat closed in, and it all went black._

 _Goku Black loomed over him, a scavenger over prey, and observed Vegeta frothing at the mouth pensively. "You'll have more lives to live, Saiyan. This end is just the beginning of the end."_

 _Even if he hadn't seen the thrashing tail, Vegeta would have known for certain that the man before him was a Saiyan. All the signs were there, the tough ruddiness, the coarse edges, the battle-scarred body, the astounding strength, the fierce tenacity, the bloodlust and the uncompromising attitude that would tolerate no shortcomings. But somehow this perfect specimen of a Saiyan had been cornered. A massive army wearing sleek ivory armour had converged upon him. They pointed sophisticated weaponry at him, and the Saiyan discharged pellets of ki at them that just distributed harmlessly across their shields. He tried to advance upon them instead, to tear them apart neanderthal style, but they had also erected a barrier around him where his high ki was barred admittance. Vegeta surveyed the Saiyan's armour. It was archaic with its romanesque pleats, that dated this scene back to a thousand years prior. Of course, this had to be one of the campaigns of the Tsufurujins against the Saiyans._

 _The Tsufurujins were the original occupants of planet Plant, who were weak but resourceful. They had been in a constant war with the Saiyans ever since the Saiyans had disembarked from their outmoded spacecrafts upon their planet and had proceeded to massacre the inhabitants in a bloody coup in order to make it their own. Vegeta knew that eventually the Saiyans had won the war, and had subsequently renamed the planet Vegeta where his family had ruled ever since. The means through which the Saiyans had prevailed though was a record that had been misplaced for future generations._

 _Nothing the Saiyan did had any impact, and the Tsufurujins began to laugh in ridicule, their fear for the stronger species unsubstantiated. The throng of soldiers began to move apart, clearing a lane into which two Tsufurujins came forward who were carrying wooden posts where the bodies of a Saiyan woman and child were mounted. Their tails had been chopped off and were now knotted as a spoils of war around the two Tsufurujins's waists. The Saiyan was immovable. That was commendable, Vegeta appraised. Saiyans were not supposed to have schmaltzy feelings for anyone, even their progeny._

 _The Tsufurujins lowered the woman's and the child's bodies to the ground and the Saiyan blinked. In that one involuntary motion, Vegeta knew that he was not the only Saiyan to have veered so disastrously from his race's ideology. The Saiyan cared about his mate and child and the Tsufurujins would use this to their advantage. Angry Tsufurujins closed in on their invader's dead bodies like a pack of starving wolves, and desecrated them until there was no trace of them remaining except for the blood and guts daubing the pristine white of their uniforms. Vegeta tried to intervene, but his hands could not enclose around Tsufurujin necks, as he was just a passive observer exhuming a long since entombed history._

 _The Saiyan had tried to stay disengaged, but just acting as a bystander as his loved ones were mauled in such a manner had snapped the last lingering thread of his pride. He roared and his strength increased in such stupendous increments that the force field containing him disabled. Hail rained down against a darkened sky, with the elements even submitting to the control of the Saiyan's mood swings. His strength reached astronomical levels, and then it happened, he transformed. His golden emissions incinerated all the Tsufurujins around him with the furor of a star in its prime. Vegeta turned away from the legendary Super Saiyan. He could not bear to look at him, for there was nothing mighty or noble about his transformation, it had derived from weakness and despair._

 _Afterwards, Vegeta was moving forth very quickly, so that he became seasick. It was a coronation day and he was perched on his father's reconstructed throne in the great hall of planet Freeza. Scores of guests and loyal subjects were all bowing to him while Bulma, Trunks and his daughter were to his side, adorned in the finest Saiyan raiment. They looked so very proud of him and they all looked so impossibly happy. The diamond and blood ruby crown of the Saiyans was placed on Vegeta's golden head...he was a Super Saiyan? How could this be? Would he have been able to achieve the form on his own without jeopardizing his family?_

 _The only feedback he received was a devoted chorus of, "All hail Vegeta, King of the Saiyans and King of the entire universe." The alternate future was ripped away like a crumpled draft from a sketchbook, while underneath lay the true finished version that was blackened and punctuated with holes._

 _When he awoke, the interdimensional door was shut and locked. He couldn't open it. The door was modeled out of cherry wood with engravings of sakura blossoms, and from the keyhole, two teardrops of blood trickled forth. The door hung spookily in the air, unyielding to his increasingly crazed battering and deaf to his entreaties to re-open. With no other option but to find another escape route, Vegeta walked back to the fire pit._

 _The pink blaze had fizzled out to flesh-coloured soot. He saw their discarded tea cups, buried half-way in the sand, filled not with blood but water. Upon the worm-eaten trunk where Goku Black had sat, was now a skeleton, with some of the bones arranged into a skull and crossbones symbol. The bones had been bleached by the light from Vegetasei's three oppressive suns. They looked like they had been lying there forgotten for decades. How much time had passed? All the realms had an unreliable passage of time, but time in this realm in particular seemed to move at an alarmingly rapid speed. Goku Black was gone, dead or faking his own death, but Vegeta knew that he would never be haunted by him again. Vegeta felt like the butt of some cruel practical joke. He had never been able to defeat Black, the Super Saiyan in masquerade. That part of his supposed destiny was just a deception. He had begun to realize that it all was. He had falsely believed that Black held the key to his destiny, to his ascension and to his salvation of the multiverse. But it was Bulma, Trunks, his unborn daughter, they were the keys. He had only ever needed his family. The power had resided in him all along. He could have had it all, instead he had thrown it all away, mistaken in his belief that he couldn't have everything so he would settle for the most illusory outcome. That alternate future depicting his coronation day could have been real, he just hadn't chosen correctly._

 _In a rising temper at his arrogance and the improvidence he had brought upon himself, he ravaged everything around him. The desert stones climbed in a cyclone around him and a hunkering beast of power activated frighteningly inside him, no longer leashed by the limitations of his body and ignorant mind. Everything ignited into dazzling gold, and his tremendous strength reigned forth upon the world. He had finally ascended. But it didn't feel like the next step. The transformation wasn't revolutionary, it felt like he was going backwards like a butterfly devolving back to into its larval form. It's because I've gone about this all wrong, I've wrecked everything with hubris. With a final touch, golden ki ringed around his head in a crown of thorns. What he had so desired reaped only desolation because he had doomed to the abyss the only things that mattered in his blind pursuit for power and recognition. In the hollow triumph of becoming the most celebrated member of his race, his newly rendered emerald eyes shattered into tears, and he wept. He didn't want this anymore, he just wanted her safe and in his arms. As his tears joined their blood in the thirsty sand, the door gaped open on its own._

Vegeta stirred with a primal scream. His fried hair stuck up and gashes littered his body. It was as if he had barely survived a battle. Despite all the commotion and even with their most prized possession smashed, the norns still ignored him as they tutted tonelessly over their nearly completed work. Vegeta's eyes delved into the pieces of the glass. The smoke had almost dissipated entirely but some subdued woebegone noise that was just like Bulma's phoenix song, permeated the air. Vegeta laboured to hear and was able to make out Bulma's tiny scared voice pleading from the shards, and his heart stood still.

"Vegeta, why have you forsaken me in my darkest hour? How could you when we love each other so dearly?" And through the broken glass, he saw what he had wanted, he saw her heart break.

 _Bulma was fixing a pocket watch when the hour hand unexpectedly hurried forward while the minute hand, in opposition, furiously sped backwards. This was the third such irregular episode that occurred whenever she tried to tinker with anything affecting time. The first incidence involved all the springs and gears in the watch rusting over and no longer fitting in their encasement. The second had the hands of the clock disappear entirely, like time itself no longer existed. And now time couldn't decide whether to accelerate or to turn back. Time had lost its direction and ran differently now. It was that way now everywhere and for everyone. The inconsistencies in time were a presage that the death of the multiverse was fast approaching. Whether seconds or years remained, she did not know. But before she had been taken from Earth, Vegeta had flown her over West City to go back to his ship and she had seen the downtown clock tower, whose hands hadn't moved in years suddenly both tick towards midnight. She knew then that it was doomsday clock, and that was the last precise time reading she'd seen._

 _She was a scientist first and foremost and the whims in the supposedly invariable laws of nature pained and violated her sensibilities. She could revert it, she had to. If anyone would be able to smooth out the kinks in the flow of time, it'd be her. She did after all have more motivation than most people, who lived every day as if it might not be their last. Moreover, it would be nice for her to know how many days had elapsed in Vegeta's absence. Hell, she wasn't even sure what day it was anymore. But that was just a technicality, she had a much bigger scope in mind._

 _Bulma flat-out rejected the likelihood that her son was gone forever and that his soul had been overrun by demons. No mother would concede such a defeat. That's when she developed the idea to build a time machine. She could reverse time and prevent Trunks from entering the demon realm, and they could be a family again. She could never exonerate herself for her role in Trunks's death. Vegeta had ordered them to decamp and to find asylum on a peaceful planet while he persevered on his quest. But Bulma would not listen to reason, being too loyal and too afraid to allow them to be divided. Thereafter, she stayed home, she didn't think Vegeta could endure the strain of another loss._

 _Bulma put down her screwdriver in annoyance. She was ready to quit when the hands disjoined from the clock, and the entire timepiece drooped and melted. "How am I supposed to manipulate space and time to go back to a year ago if I can't even fix a damn pocket watch?" she groused. "Ok, time for a break."_

 _All at once the horrible cramps started. This pregnancy that Vegeta wasn't even aware of, was discommoding her horribly. She could have easily concocted a counteracting agent against the false contractions, but she had none of the necessary constituents and it wasn't as if she could simply go out and buy them._

 _They had been treated with hostility ever since they arrived on this planet. The residents, the luddites, were deeply religious who adopted medieval attitudes that were anti-industrialization and technology. So when their large spacecraft had landed in the heart of the luddite's village, they had instantly been subject to abuse that flying and exploration were privileges for which only gods qualified and that they needed to repent. It only worsened and they became bigger targets of the villagers's discord when word got out of Bulma's inventions, which were another slap in the face to the gods, and that among them was now Vegeta, a hated murderer, whose misdeeds had even echoed to this isolated planet cut off from all communication. Bulma had wanted to leave immediately, and Vegeta had given her his blessing to do so, but he wasn't going anywhere. He explained to her that this was a gateway world where he would find a door, and behind that door was the place of his ascension. Bulma postponed her exodus, she had steadfastly accompanied him thus far, she wasn't going to leave him now especially when it was almost at an end. Vegeta had gone on an expedition to find the door. Meanwhile, the villagers had branded them fugitives who had to be punished. There was a bounty put on their heads._

 _Presently, it was just her and Jaco, an alien she had befriended on another dying world, who were ensconced in an enchanted house in the mountains where the villagers's ire couldn't penetrate. Bulma doubled over from the splitting stitch of another cramp. She couldn't take it anymore, she needed relief now. That's when she decided to make a quick trek to the woods to collect pain mitigating flora. She imagined Vegeta's stern face at her disregard of a direct order to not leave the house. She was just going to have to flout that injunction. He's not the boss of me, especially when he's not here. Bulma patted her still flat belly. "How could he leave us behind like that?" She sighed, she knew exactly why, he had made it very clear to her that becoming a Super Saiyan would take precedence over everything, including her. Vegeta had never conscripted her to his cause, she had always willingly signed up in the hopes that it would all be different once his goal was accomplished. "I wonder if he did it yet. I know you'll come back Vegeta, but can't you have the decency to at least say goodbye first?" she grumbled. "Hey Jaco," she signaled to the chrome headed alien, "we're going out."_

 _Jaco looked at her startled but then an unusual giddiness came over him. His eyes shifted back and forth as he went into an adjacent room, "Sure thing Miss Bulma, just give me one minute…"_

 _She wished she had listened to him to not leave the house, she wouldn't be in this predicament now if she had. Once they had ventured beyond the boundary of the shielding spell, they had been ambushed by a horde of villagers wielding pitchforks. Jaco had grouped himself in with the unruly masses, and pointed his finger vigorously at Bulma. "She's here," he yelled, "Bulma the heathen, come get her and take her away. Quickly, before her brute of a mate returns."_

 _Jaco, that scheming alien had deceived her. Vegeta had advised her not to ever trust anyone. But she had just wanted some company that wasn't committed to obsession. The norns had predicted that she would be betrayed by someone she trusted, but Vegeta had always just assumed that he would be the one to be guilty of it. Bulma had never even considered the possibility of Vegeta betraying her._

 _The villagers had remanded her in custody, where she idled in a dank cell, while they decided her punishment. As the days counted down, she mentally sought out Vegeta, but he hadn't replied to any of her subliminal correspondence._

 _And now the day of her atonement was here. The villagers had ordained that the only way to appease the Great Dragon God would be with fire. Bulma was haggard, wearing an itchy brown sack, with dirt encrusted everywhere. The luddites had shorn her beautiful hair, her pride and joy, that had extended almost to her waist. They said she had to absolve herself of all vanity. Fortunately, it was still early enough in her pregnancy that her stomach was only slightly rounded and could be attributed to gluttony instead of a child. That was a small grace, for they would have performed an exorcism on her if they had known that the devil, Vegeta's, child was in her womb. Bulma was being lead out on her walk of shame while the swarming crowd took turns to spit at her and to chuck used up cores and rinds at her. The sour juices gummed to her skin but it was no match for the acid churning inside her at the prospect at what she would do to them once Vegeta came back. The luddites thought her to be a strange misshapen fruit that had to be weeded out, but as she walked, with held her head high, she was defiant and unbroken._

 _There was no doubt in her mind that Vegeta would save her. She would have appreciated an earlier rescue, but he had always had bad timing. After Trunks's death, Vegeta had solemnly promised to always protect her. He had given her a long ranting speech about it, overstating the words honour and pride, that had the intensity of wedding vows they had never exchanged. He'd better hustle over here, things weren't going to improve anytime soon on their own._

 _Bulma was tied to a stake in the middle of an area piled high with straw. There was already one adjacent bonfire, where she saw her armaments, her aircraft, her capsule belt and the beginning framework of her time machine being merrily consumed by the flames. Some small part of her started to decay, but she promptly chastised herself and brought it back to health. It was a major setback, but Vegeta was coming, and she could rebuild._

 _The head luddite was reading out her long list of crimes, fornication with a devil, theft of the gods's knowledge, time manipulation, practicing the dark arts, but she could barely hear it over the sound of her creations beeping as they transfused into liquid metal._

" _Would you ask the Great Dragon God for forgiveness?"_

 _It was time for her last words. "No," she spat, "you should be begging me for forgiveness instead. I'll burn you all with infrared microwaves, ultraviolet radiation, give you chemical and electrical burns. And Vegeta? Vegeta will burn you. He'll roast you on a spit like the pigs you are using his ki as a flame. We'll burn your feeble beliefs away with the technology and power you so despise and bring you hellfire."_

 _The crowd responded in communal enmity, "Kill the witch, kill the witch, kill the witch!" they chanted in unison. Someone doused her with a blue fluid. It was the time machine fuel that she had produced._

 _Vegeta, where are you? The ravening flames from the rubble of her inventions traveled to the dry straw at her feet. The soles of her shoes began to burn and then she started to doubt that Vegeta would come. Her hand went to stroke her belly. But Vegeta, what about our child? The child won't ever be born, we won't ever know it. As the flames marred her alabaster skin, she broke, she could not help herself from breaking. Out of pride she had wanted to remain silent but she could only scream at Vegeta's broken promises. Bulma sobbed, "Vegeta, I love you. Vegeta, why have you forsaken me in my darkest hour? How could you when we love each other so dearly?" When the flames took her for their own, and she burned in martyrdom to their love, she no longer belonged to herself, Vegeta or to any worlds._

Bulma, his bird in a golden cage, she never had been free again since that fateful night when he had abducted her, but now if any such paradise existed in the great beyond, he knew she would fly there and make a home.

When the door had opened, it was above the site of her sacrificial burning. It was with a maddened heavy heart, that he had ascertained that he could not detect Bulma's ki anywhere. Instead he had perceived the luddites, whose raucous cheering at the witch's death turned to deathly silence at the sight of Vegeta suspended in the air, with gold radiating off him in damaging rays, looking every bit as powerful and vengeful as any god.

"Here I am," he announced in a whisper of forewarning that all the luddites could nonetheless still hear. "Your messiah of death, now burn." His ki expanded in a limitless ring of fire that razed the entire village and its citizens to the ground.

When he had unearthed his ring in the ashes, he had broken. And upon finally learning the truth about Bulma's fate, there was nothing left to break inside him, it was just a blow to an empty casket. Vegeta was just left with a foundation of cool misery. His negligence had killed his mate and he had effectively murdered both of his children. He was not the multiverse's saviour but its destroyer. Drained of everything, he did not cry this time, for he knew what had to be done. It was time for the gods to meet their own judgment. "Bulma, one last killing spree and then I'm finally coming back to you."

The norns, they were malevolent, they liked to bring chaos. Their visions had tricked him just as the man in black had. The norns were the impetus behind this series of calamitous events. It was their turn to be punished for instigating all of this negativity. He powered up so that those mere instruments of gods could face the wrath of a mortal god. Before he had never been able to injure the norns, but now it was different. A Super Saiyan could supersede that supernatural barricade. In his distress, Vegeta had not noticed that the norns were already awaiting his retribution. Undercover, they had turned towards him, so he could confront them at last. Vegeta hooked onto their shrouds and angrily tore them away. They would no longer be able to hide from their crimes.

He realized in dismay and gallows humour that the norns were blind. Their eyes were misted over with cataracts that had thickened over time. The weavers of all fates, the seers into the future had been blind all this time. What premonitions they had made were just guesswork, a charlatan's act at worst and a self-fulfilling prophecy at best. This was the last of the tidings they would impart. Vegeta went to remove their eyes from their sockets, those rheumy eyes that had seen nothing. But those relics that he had once thought omniscient and absolute were just derelicts. As soon as he touched them, they crumbled to dust. And just like that, the line of Merlin was no more.

Vegeta had retired to Bulma's funeral pyre and was anointing himself with her ashes, needing to feel her with him one last time. Her dragon ball on a string around his neck had petrified, so the Great Dragon God was dead. Let everything die now, for only in death would there be any possibility for him to reclaim all he had lost. The multiverse and all its shallow charms was nothing but a pale mirror compared to the magnanimity of her charms. Her eyes alone contained a multiverse's worth of light and hope. Those two flickering candles lit up this bleak insensitive landscape. But her light, it had to go out, and so the multiverse would descend into its eternal nocturne. "You gods above wanted me to repair the beams and to wake the Great Dragon God from his slumber, and as compensation, you took away the only one who held me together. So I have turned my back on the multiverse, there are no redeeming qualities, there is nothing left to save. And I hope you callow gods choke on the never-ending darkness, as I will choke on the black tar that is all that remains in my heart of darkness."

Vegeta put his Saiyan ring back on, and powered up with a staggering severity that was soon beyond his control as the physical matter of his body morphed only into ki. In his last moments, he finally knew what the etched out inscription, what the missing half of his ring read. Bulma had translated the first part correctly. He boomed, "My life's blood is not my power, my life's blood is my love." His body cremated from a spectacular fusillade of ki, where his ashes coupled with hers. This time the dragon ball and his ring also burned.

His power was the spark to the end of days. The sky slashed into two and the beams supporting the twelve universes splintered and collapsed, upon which the multiverses collided irreversibly into one another. Götterdämmerung was here.

* * *

"Guess who?"

Hands covered his eyes obscuring his vision. Anticipating an enemy, he waved the hands violently away.

"Good thing I can no longer feel pain or that would have hurt, you jerk." A woman with blue hair that cascaded in a waterfall down to her waist stood with her hands on her hips in front of him. Her eyes were the clearest crystal glass, where he could see light and happiness reflected warmly at him. Her face was in the full bloom of youth, with no wrinkles of concern to blemish the perfect features. The woman continued to loudly berate him, an angel with the mouth of a devil who could withstand any fire.

"Bulma?" He held her tentatively, like she was a phantom that would once more turn to ash. "Is it really you?"

"Right down to my soul."

"How did I not know it was you?" Vegeta asked.

"There's no ki or smell here, so your usual methods of detection won't work."

Vegeta scanned his surroundings. There was white nothingness that spanned in all directions. "But how are you here?" His fingers ran like a river's gentle current through her hair. "The multiverse was destroyed. Is this all that remains of the multiverse? Blank space that stretches infinitely?"

Bulma laughed pleasantly, sounding like the babbling of a brook. "Don't worry about the multiverse, it can heal itself. The beams have already recombined. The Great Dragon God has reawakened and he's looking at everything with one eye open. The multiverse always re-establishes itself after death. After many eons it dies and resurrects."

"But then where are we? Is this the afterlife?" He tightened his hold on her. "I thought I had lost you forever. I had hoped that death would reunite us."

Bulma's smile shifted slowly into a cryptic line. "So you don't remember? This is just an intermission. We're in a holding room, a room of spirit and time, but we won't get to stay here long. Our destinations are already being prepared for us. This is only a temporary reunion." Bulma looked downwards, her fringe of hair concealing the lone downcast wrinkle that cracked across the surface of her temple. She sighed. "Vegeta, you should remember all this. All your memories get returned to you after death. This white space, this white noise should be as familiar as a womb to you by now. I shouldn't have to explain it to you every single time, it gets boring." Her voice cracked a little too as she urged, "But please remember, I know you don't want to, but I need you to remember."

Vegeta had felt the progressively rowdy and urgent knocking of some dark shadow at the door to his mind, but so far he had denied it entrance.

"Don't keep the knowledge out, Vegeta. You must see it all again, all the suffering and mistakes. I see it too, it's tattooed permanently on the back of my eyelids. So I'll be damned if I let you stay eyes wide shut."

"For you Bulma, I'll see." Vegeta granted the invading tumult contact with his inner mind, and the truth it reinstated in him was more terrible than the million white lies he had been repeating to himself ever since he had appeared in the room. Memories filled the empty swathes of his mind with sorrow. The memories bit at him like flies, and in each bite he saw a new revulsion - him terrorizing Bulma on Namek, stealing her dragon balls to become immortal, the scorched M of the majin on his forehead as he renounced the peaceful life they had made in favour of becoming a universal dictator with his stolen power, Bulma burning at the stake, her only crime loving a monster like him, and so on. And then Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, swooped down upon him, taking Vegeta to his foul bosom, where he wrapped his black wings of the gospel around him.

With horror, Vegeta realized that he had lived this all before, countless permutations in fact. Lives that all started differently, but all ended the same, in all their deaths by his irresponsible hand. Super Saiyan wasn't some elusive form, it was commonplace. He would achieve it innumerable times after a long conflict where he would finally pay the ultimate price and exchange his family for power. Every time he had let them die. It was only after their deaths that he could understand and accept that they were his true heart's desire. And every time he had this epiphany, he would meet Bulma after death, and she would give him another chance to right the wrong. But he never did. How many times have I failed when in my arrogance, I thought I had finally succeeded?

Bulma saw the veil lift from Vegeta's eyes. He would have toppled over from the onslaught of twisted memories that were flashing through his mind, but Bulma propped him up. "Good, you remember," she said thinly. When he seemed to regain a semblance of himself, Bulma slapped him, strong as whiplash. And even though there should have been no sensations in death, he felt its brutality. "I'd punish you some more but our time together is limited. And we have so much more to say."

"I deserve all your punishments and more, I'm so sorry," Vegeta said quietly.

Bulma shook her head tersely. "Not so fast, we aren't giving up. Don't be depressed, don't waste emotions Vegeta." Bulma was doling out the advice he had always cautioned her with. "The only thing we can do now is change it. I know you have the capacity to be good, to choose us from the outset, I just somehow have to get that message through your thick skull."

Her words were like a live wire through him. Vegeta spoke sadly, "You're still waiting for me? After I failed again? But why? You could stop this anytime and end this excruciating causal loop. Just go past those pearly gates and erase me from your history."

"Maybe it'll be possible to go there one day," Bulma mused, "but for now those gates are shut to me. I made a choice and that was for punishment."

"But why suffer on my account?"

Bulma stared at him like he was missing the most obvious thing in the world. "Because I love you. It's not like I'd leave you behind to rot in hell. And besides, I'm not really that good. I lied, stole and killed for you, for us, so I must be punished too."

"Bulma, hell is where I belong. How many lifetimes do you have to suffer before you understand that? Don't drag yourself down to hell with me."

An obstinate wrinkle set beside Bulma's mouth. "No, I don't believe that. You're just slower than most to learn the error of your ways. My choice was to refute paradise and instead to have our fates linked. If you're destined for hell, then so am I. Heaven is only an option when we can pass through those gates hand in hand together. Until then, I choose reincarnation. I'm not going to leave you. I won't. I love you...you just have to realize that you love me too before it's too late. That's why I always elect to pause things here, to rewind it all to the start and to re-set our lives until we do it right. We have an endless supply of lives in the game of life. I won't accept you lose, game over, I only accept and then they lived happily ever after."

"No," Vegeta refused, "I won't accept this anymore. I have a choice too, and I choose hell. No more games of fate. I will impose heaven on you and you will see that that's your proper place, and you will forget me."

"Haha, Vegeta," Bulma exhaled, "you have no choices. Your sins and good deeds were weighed, and naturally in the delicate balance of morals, your evil side won. You'd be going straight to hell if it weren't for my interference. You're bound to my choices."

"Let me go then." Vegeta was begging her.

Bulma responded by firmly taking his hand. "No. I'm offering you a life line, so take it once again. Take it. Take the gift of life readily, because either way, I won't let you drown in the depths of hell."

"What if I just make you drown?" Vegeta countered. "What if you gradually turn more wicked with time instead of me becoming more good?"

"Every time we're sent back, things constantly change, but the constants are me and you. Despite the ever fluctuating circumstances and challenges, we still come to love each other. So don't tell me that our love won't prevail and that we'll both become immersed in evil. You're so cynical Vegeta. It's about faith. It's about fate not being set in stone. It's about true love being stronger than fate, for true love doesn't die, true love waits. If I have to wait forever for you to improve, then I will for I'll still be able to see that rainbow at the end of forever. What's a thousand more torturous lives if I know I'll eventually earn you as my reward? But I know it won't take that long for it's not only me who's waiting for you." Bulma's nails jabbed into his hand. "Vegeta, our children are waiting for us. All of our children from our past lives. They're beyond those pearly gates and waiting for us. I hope they don't think we abandoned them." Now Bulma was begging him. "Please Vegeta, we shouldn't make them wait much longer. I want to see our daughter. We've never had a chance to meet her, she's always been taken from us prematurely."

At the mention of his children, Vegeta relented. "What would you have me do?"

"Maintain some of your humanity... or Saiyan softness. Don't let your soul become consumed by hate, obsession and power. Let your love for us guide you instead."

"You make it sound so easy for me, that it's still possible for me to change without any of this background knowledge."

"This has by no means been an easy ride. But that's the thing about faith, my faith in you, it still persists in the face of adversity. Just be good this time, don't be a bad man." They both remembered an odious pink shirt from a lifetime ago.

"I am your bad man," Vegeta attested, "but I promise you I'll be better this time. I can be a man who keeps his promises. I can make this right."

On that uplifting note, they heard the awful blare of a siren. "There's that ringing again," Bulma said ruefully while covering her ears. "Hell's Bells. It means our time is up. Now we'll just receive our final purifications before we're sent back into an unwritten life."

She suddenly secured something in her hand, "Ahh, I knew I'd get it back." Bulma opened her hand to him to reveal her dragon ball necklace. As she refastened the necklace around her neck she clarified, "The last couple instances before our departures, I've been assigned a totem to take with me into the next life. It's sort of like a reminder of what we've accomplished so far and what still needs to be done. It's proof that our fate is in our own hands, that things will proceed differently and that we will find each other again."

Vegeta felt something manifest in his hand too. It was a capsule. "I think this is yours too, another keepsake for you to remember me by," he said trying to volunteer it to her.

She considered the capsule in his outstretched hand then grinned brightly at him. "I already have mine," she insisted. "I think that one's yours to keep. You've earned a souvenir too. That means you are changing. The gods have been watching and are recognizing that gradual change. What's in it? Open it," Bulma asked curiously.

Vegeta clicked the button on the capsule, but it was jammed and wouldn't open.

Bulma regarded the capsule sagely. "Maybe it's not supposed to open yet. I'm sure we'll find out its contents eventually. Just always keep it on your person like I do my necklace, and it'll lead you back to me." Bulma rested her head in the niche between his neck and shoulders, taking a short break there before she girded herself back up in that strong-willed unusually Saiyan manner of hers that could take on the world. "Before we go though," she requested, "just let me have one last kiss."

Vegeta pulled her to him, letting her long hair whip around his face and tickle his elbows like refreshing splashes of water, and swept her off her feet. His lips conferred upon hers the gift of life. His dead breathlessness breathed a new life and consciousness into her. Bulma parted her lips that jolted with new life, to his, so that Vegeta could also be resurrected. It was a kiss that could only mean farewell with its great outpouring of emotion, love and promise that flooded into him and he shared back with her.

And then Vegeta sucked something out of her that he couldn't return, her memories. Bulma disconnected from him, with her lips trembling as she assessed the darkly handsome stranger with the bad mien who she had unaccountably been kissing. Vegeta reached out to comfort her, but his dead hand cancelled her peak bloom, and she decomposed into a dusting of sakura petals that fell softly across his body like a warm snow. Vegeta was speechless, his hands were still positioned solidly as if she were still there, and soon a nonexistent wind scattered the petals deep into the white expanse where he could no longer see them.

As she disappeared into nothing, the love of all his lives, he cursed himself for his stupidity and tardiness ruining it all again. It struck him then that he hadn't even told her he loved her back yet, never, not even once. "Bulma, I love you," he cried into the empty void but as always, he was too late.

* * *

The space pod closed in on its destination, and Vegeta got his first glimpse of the planet. It was a large glittering sapphire with cuts of white moonstone at its upper levels. Earth. An undamaged jewel of a world with colossal oceans and blankets of clouds. But not for much longer, for Vegeta delighted in the shattering of jewels.

Radditz had arrived on Earth a year earlier in a lousy bid to recruit his wayward Saiyan brother into their fold. Radditz had died, but before his death pertinent information had been relayed over his scouter. Earth had dragon balls, magical wish orbs that could grant your heart's desire. Vegeta already had a wish in mind, he just had to eliminate Radditz's pesky brother first.

He removed a small cylindrical object from the pocket of his flight suit and spun it around in his hands. The object seemed like something advanced; however, it certainly wasn't technology native to his world. He referred to it as a capsule. He had never known where it came from, why he had it or why it never opened. It was just something he had toted with him since childhood and now functioned as something like a good luck charm, if one believed in such things.

Nonetheless, Vegeta had a good feeling that today would be his lucky day. He automatically pressed the button to the capsule, normally it didn't budge, but today the button seemed to unstick and loosen a fraction.

* * *

Vegeta emerged back into the room of spirit and time with only the white immensity to greet him. His death had preceded Bulma's. It was funny but he couldn't recall any other cycle where she had outlived him. For once he would have to wait for her, but that was alright, she had waited several lifetimes for him already. In the interim, he could reintroduce himself to all of his restored memories. His most recent memory would vex him for awhile. To think, the legendary Super Saiyan would be defeated by two delinquent androids...

After many years, Bulma finally reappeared. "Back here again, huh?" she commented.

Vegeta smirked wryly, "I must have failed again."

"Not just you, the both of us," she revised, clasping his hand. "We'll just try again until we've made amends. But I think we're close now. You fought for the Earth, you saved me and baby Trunks when Dr. Gero shot down our plane. You didn't let us _fall_. You'll be pleased to know that the androids were exterminated by our son. He's a Super Saiyan now too, actually he has ascended even beyond that."

"Only my son could accomplish that," Vegeta gloated proudly.

A weird glow started to filter through the dense plate of his armour. The light was being emitted from the capsule. Vegeta picked the capsule out from underneath his mesh undercoat, and had to shield his eyes from its glare.

"I think it's time for you to open it," Bulma suggested.

Vegeta slung the capsule down towards the white plain, and a yellow spindly structure popped into view.

"It's my time machine," Bulma exclaimed. "What's it doing here? I wouldn't have built one if I had known you had one in your pocket this whole time. So what does it mean?"

Vegeta deduced its significance before Bulma did. The gods were still full of mischief. "It means we have another chance but we won't have to shed our memories first. Maybe we didn't fail after all." Vegeta inserted himself inside the time machine and customized the settings to go back to a past time.

Bulma hauled herself into the time machine and situated herself on top of Vegeta's lap in the pilot's seat. "What are you doing? Where are we going?" Bulma asked bemused.

"Trunks. You remember that one incarnation where his soul was stolen from him? Well, we're going to get it back for him. And after that? I think it's time to step beyond those pearly gates to collect all of our children. And then, with this time machine, we have entire universes and timelines available to us, so let's go explore them all. Even with all our lifetimes, we've never gone on a, what's the term, family vacation?"

Bulma smiled, "That will be the best adventure of them all."

As the time machine energized, Bulma espied something multicoloured painted across the stark whiteness. She tapped excitedly on the window of the time machine, "Look Vegeta, there's a rainbow. It's the rainbow at the end of forever. See if you can find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

Vegeta crooked her head from the window and back towards him so that the only colours she could see were the beautiful raven wings of his eyelashes. "I have no use for gold," he snubbed. He lowered her head down to his lips. They kissed and as the time machine journeyed through the ages, their true love no longer had to wait, it was time for true love to be fulfilled.


End file.
